Respect

Uncle John whom we call Zeke and me Grandpa Joe, his father, well, their relationship was rocky, if I may be cryptic and dance around the issue. Yet Zeke impressed me with his sense of decency when Joe passed. Riding along with me and me brother Phil as we drove to Jacksonville, Illinois for Grandpa's funeral, Uncle John became surprisingly open and introspective about losing his father. He remarked, "Me and that man didn't always get along. But he gave me life. I have to go to his funeral. I owe him this."

Zeke was a man with his demons, God bless him, but he knew right from wrong. He knew that he had to do what was right, and damn personal histories. I think I learned all I needed to know about him on that road trip to his father's hometown.  You do what's right by your folks. You owe them that.

Mom's been gone over two years now, and I miss our Sunday trips. I did them out of love and was happy to, but we need to remember that part of love, perhaps the most important component of it, is doing what you're supposed to do. Ideally you do this freely and willfully. Yet even then, part of it is recognizing obligation. There's nothing wrong with admitting that fact.

During a homily one Sunday the priest was lecturing on the Ten Commandments. The first three deal with our relationship with God; the following seven with relationships between ourselves. What's the first of those? Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. Before we do anything else, even before we're told not to kill or steal, we're told to honor our parents. That's how important our debt to them is.

If five hour drives and McDonald's cheeseburgers made my infirm mother happy in her last years, I owed her that. I owe her much more, but we do what we can at the time. If the best Zeke could do at the time was attend his father's funeral, he saw that he owed him that. I say Zeke paid his debt. And willfully.